Free to Play Cast: EQN Vanishes, WildStar Could Be Next! Ep 173

So EverQuest Next is a goner but what does this mean for Daybreak? With massive layoffs what does the future even look like for WildStar? We wrap up with a preliminary Paragon review. All that and more on this week’s Free to Play Cast!

If you have submissions for the show’s Weekly Bombs, have questions for the panel (nothing is off limits!), or just ideas for what you want covered you can now send them to [email protected] You can also be a guest in the show, just send us why you want to host, and what topic or game you would like to cover.

Free-To-Play Cast is the official podcast (and videocast) of MMOBomb.com about free to play multiplayer online games. Free-To-Play Cast takes on the week’s biggest news with plenty of opinion, weekly bombs, community feedback, guests, laughs thrown in for good measure and much more. Have fun and expect a new episode next week!

Mike "Magicman" Byrne has been a part of the MMOBomb family for years and serves as the site's current Editor-in-Chief. His love for MMOs and gaming in general has led him to covering games for numerous websites including Gamebreaker TV and XIV Nation where he proudly displays his fanboy flag for FFXIV:ARR.

11 Readers Commented

Da bomb to the new Crimson Count Arthas skin in HoTS, I’ve been waiting for this to come out for weeks and was finally able to buy it. After all, what’s more awesome than the Lich King as a Vampire? Not much.

I don’t think that MMO’s in a whole are dead, the problem is just that the amount of Games that are there are making the market Oversaturated. I think we will see by far more Shut downs till a point where you really only have a handful of games left. And then at One point People are again begging for newer games and MMO and Free2Play will see a boom again.

Free2Play as a Model is not dead, it will Continue to exist but is surely receiving a hefty beating, why they decided to move over to Buy2Play is unknown to me since Ingame shops and Microtransactions still exist in most games.

Well, Daybreak, as an owner of Landmark i was kinda Dissappointed, not surprised by the decision but more by the Explanation why it happened. you already said it “It wasn’t Fun” after 5+ years of development they should have felt at one point that it wont be to theree liking, and to say “it is a game we would not want to have it that way”, what ? Can you for no reason read my mind ? The community never playd the game so how the hell do you know we wouldn’t have fun at it ? And yea with EQN canceled shit finally hits the fan 24/7, Be it reddit, there forums or fan Forum, people are not really willed to play anything fro daybreak.

Daybreaks current course is leading straight and with lightspeed to “Closing the Doors a Last time” .

i am not giving a Da bomb or a bomb but a Zarbomb to, how could it be any other then : Daybreak Games. Bad choices leading to certain death. If they would announce the Closing of Daybreak none would be shocked.

I think mmos just aren’t doing anything new. with companies always claiming ‘the next big thing’ and delivering the same old same old, and not very well at that, its hurting the genre as a whole. I think players continue to jump from game to game wanting and hoping for ‘the next big thing’ but so far it hasn’t been delivered.

another factor is time commitments. not everyone has the same amount of time to invest in a game. leveling, gearing, finding reliable groups etc. all take time and in a lot of cases still don’t produce a very enjoyable experience long term. when your time is already limited due to work, family, etc. that probably weren’t constraints when you first got into the genre this can push in the direction of MOBA type games with its more accessible structure.

I think that as the MMO industry has shrunk, the smaller market has meant free to play has struggled more. It seems to flourish on mobile, where you can have millions upon millions of people, but with standard MMOs there does seem to have been a shift towards buy to play lately.
Free to play no longer has much of a positive marketing spin about it, many people view it pretty negatively, and launching new games as free to play might have just too many people now wondering ‘and how is this game going to screw me for cash?’.

Free to play is not dying, bad games and game development companies are. Publishers are turning away from F2P at launch because they are afraid their games aren’t good enough and players might see it before they pay. It only looks like F2P is in a bad spot now because all bad games go F2P as a last resort.
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But it’s not F2P that kills those games, it’s bad management and bad design. On the other hand there are new free games like World of Warships, Armored Warfare, Black Desert (it’s F2P where I live ;P) which are doing rather well. The main lesson here is that you can’t keep making the same “Amazing WoW-killer that will blow your mind!” again and again for 12 years and expect it to sell every time.
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P.S. Wow, for some reason posting here always makes me self conscious about my English even though I’m pretty sure I’m fluent. o_o

I think the free to play model has been long dead. Especially when you pay for access via founders packs to get in a so called free to play mmo, which to me doesn’t make it free to play at all when you are asking for money to play it. Also when you add a sub fee to a free to play game, well that not free to play at all. I’m looking at you Trion Worlds with your Patron status.

They market the games as F2P but when there’s a tier of subscription or buying the game above that, it’s entering the realm of Freemium. I’ve been saying this for years now…still sticking to it because it’s true.
Real F2P games are more and more rare, especially with titles shutting down left and right. Oh well, here’s hoping companies will continue coming up with new titles…just need an infusion of new ideas that will break the mold (in a good way).